CNBC: When are you going to be ready to show what you're working on [Mind Robotics]?
Scaringe: Less than a year.
The Verge: Level 4 functionality for your company?
Scaringe: Yeah, we've said 2028 for full Level 4.
Our Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe is featured on the latest cover of Inc. Magazine, offering an inside look at the relentless grit and strategic evolution required to build Rivian from the ground up. The feature story dives deep into the lessons learned from our R1 flagship and how those insights paved the way for our next chapter. RJ shares the candid story of our journey—from the early days of late-night engineering sessions to our growth into a leader of the electric transition—highlighting the resilience of the team that made this vision a reality.
At the heart of the story is R2, and the journey it’s taken to get to this point. By fundamentally reimagining our electrical architecture and simplifying manufacturing, we’ve achieved a 50% reduction in bill of material costs compared to the R1 platform. This feature details how those radical efficiencies, combined with our pursuit of scale, make R2 the cornerstone of Rivian’s path to profitability and our most important step yet in making the adventure of electric driving accessible to everyone.
The feature hits newsstands on June 9. You can also read it at rivn.co/RJ-Inc.
U.S. News & World Report has determined the best vehicles for adventure.
The consumer rankings authority announced this week its first Best Adventure Vehicles awards in three overall categories: Camping, Road Trips and Off-Roading. An all-electric option won for each category.
“Electric makes sense in the time of high gas prices, John Vincent, U.S. News senior editor, vehicle testing, said in a phone call, “There are some incredibly capable EVs.”
It’s fitting (and somewhat reassuring) that the car brand Rivian with the phrase "Adventure Network" in its charging system’s name easily won both electric categories (SUV and truck) for off-roading. In February the EV company launched the “Rivian Adventure Department” to highlight how much the R1T truck and R1S SUV could do in an aptly named marketing push.
Vincent pointed out that Rivian has “cool features for being in the outdoors” like the R1T gear tunnel and Rivian-made camping kitchen add-on. For off-roading, Rivian handily won as the best option for approach and departure angles to avoid scraping the vehicle itself. It also protects the battery pack that sits low along the car floor.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 5 (Reuters) - Rivian is working on undisclosed variants of its R2 electric vehicles, the company's CEO said, days after starting volume production of the smaller and more affordable SUVs.
"There are other variants of R2, which we haven't shown," CEO RJ Scaringe said in an interview with Reuters, when asked about a pickup variant of R2.
"What we're building in Georgia allows for different variations," he said, referring to a new plant where Rivian will eventually expand production of R2 vehicles. Scaringe did not disclose details on what the other variants would look like.
"So clearly there could be an R2X," Scaringe said. "There's going to be combinations," he continued, adding, "I want to be careful not to announce the program."
SAN FRANCISCO, May 5 (Reuters) - Rivian Automotive is considering making its own lidar sensors and could do so in partnership with a Chinese firm, CEO RJ Scaringe said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.
Rivian did not disclose who would supply it with lidar sensors, which on demonstration vehicles were much smaller than the large, spinning units found on the streets of San Francisco and other cities in robotaxis designed by Alphabet's Waymo. Chinese suppliers such as Hesai Group and RoboSense have come to dominate the market for smaller, cheaper lidar sensors, but the rise of Chinese sensors has raised national security concerns among U.S. lawmakers.
Rather than buy directly from a Chinese supplier, Rivian is mulling making its own lidar sensors in the United States using Chinese technology, possibly through a joint venture, Scaringe said in the interview in San Francisco. Scaringe said that "all the real choices are coming out of China" for the "low hundreds of dollars price point" for the sensor that automakers such as Rivian require.
"Think of it as finding a way to structurally ingest the technology," Scaringe said. "The advancements in terms of going from the early lidars that I think a lot of us have seen - we see them here - to these much more advanced solid-state lidars, those advancements didn't happen in the United States. Those advancements happened in China."
Scaringe said Rivian is in "active discussions" with lidar firms and that the effort might also include other automakers.
"A number of different car manufacturers are thinking about how they could do that either together, or at least through a shared alignment to say, hey, let's develop production capacity in the United States for this, or at least outside China," Scaringe said.
Rivian is committing "many hundreds of millions of dollars" to its custom chip program, whose first chip, called the Rivian Autonomy Processor or RAP-1 internally, arrives this year, Scaringe said.
The automaker intends to release a new chip "every couple of years" with RAP-2 and RAP-3 successors to the first chip made on "more powerful" chip technology than the 5-nanometer from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company used to make RAP-1, the CEO said.
"It's not like you invest a few hundred million dollars and it's done," Scaringe said. "We've built a team. That team is going to continue to develop future versions of the platform."